A/N: Yay! Exams are over for another year~
Fluehatraya - Thank you for reviewing! (No, seriously, you're an angel for reviewing every chapter)
Disclaimer: I own neither the characters, or the books themselves, only the plotline. (Seriously, if I actually owned the series-es don't you think I'd be there drawing/writing to make it happen in the real thing?)
Chapter Five – Dream
"You can wake up from dreams. It's not as scary as hell."
"... … What do you think is beyond a dream?"
"That's obvious. There's nothing beyond a dream. It just ends.
"Very good, once you wake up, there is only reality. Dreams are scary because there is an end."
~ Alice and Nightmare (Heart no Kuni no Alice/Alice in the Country of Hearts)
(Chapter 3)
-St. Mungo's ~ Reception Area-
"Yes, that's right. We may not be related to Mr. Potter, but it is our duty to find him a suitable place to live. There is no reason why he mightn't live with us for a while. Certainly, since we are both experienced with the healing arts, it would be simple to keep him in a positive state of mind and address any problems before they manifest into anything serious."
The reporter nodded furiously as he jotted down notes on parchment. He raised his head to nod gravely at Sara, as she bit back laughter. As he left, gaining many odd looks from the fellow reporters that were swarming St. Mungo's, she wondered if he had been aware that his face and clothes were stained with many ink-drops from his leaking quill. Probably not, she thought, feeling the slightest bit sympathetic for the reporter. He wouldn't be let into Malfoy Manor looking like that, and if the words he'd shouted into the into the fireplace had been any indication, Malfoy Manor was where he was headed next.
-Malfoy Manor-
Lucius tapped his chin with a quill thoughtfully. The gold-edged tip was pleasant and cool to his touch, though the quill itself was no longer necessary, merely a show of wealth now that the self-inking and dictations quills had become available. But the Malfoy name had a reputation to maintain after all, one of nobility and a pure bloodline. At that thought, the elder Malfoy grit his teeth angrily. How dare a mudblood reporter intrude upon a Malfoy estate, even going so far as to wear a cheap ink-stained muggle coat while claiming himself a wizard. Real wizards didn't wear muggle clothing, nor were they ever clumsy enough to spill ink on themselves.
On the other hand, the mudblood had been able to provide some interesting information about his opponents in the competition for the custody of Harry Potter. The situation was ideal, really. The discovery of Harry Potter had been from two wizards who had been missing for over a half-decade, already a blow to their credibility. That they had supposedly 'rescued' Harry Potter from his muggles relatives when no other wizard had been able to even discover his place of residence was suspicious to say the least. Best of all, perhaps, was that they were not blood-relatives of the boy, nor did they boast the considerable wealth that the Malfoys did. And already their name were cast in doubt, while the Malfoy reputation was sterling.
Lucius replaced his quill, beckoning his wife and young son in with a finger. They were dressed formally, and so they should have been. It was time to pay a visit to the Wizenmagot. It never hurt to tip the odds in your favour after all.
-Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry ~ Headmaster's Office-
Albus frowned slightly as he read the paper. Well he'd seen it coming ever since he'd left Harry on the Dursley's doorstep; it was almost impossible to miss the hostile attitude to magic that surrounded the rather dreary Dursley household. It had taken a great deal of threatening and bribery to ensure that they'd keep the boy under their roof, although they'd maintained an actively hostile attitude towards him. Then it had taken a lot of planning to stage fake attacks on Harry Potter and have his muggle relatives seemingly 'protect' him. It had been very good for the overall treatment of muggles worldwide, even the most prejudiced pure-blood families had stopped hexing any muggle or muggleborn they'd happen to run across, if only because they feared accidentally hexing Harry Potter's adoptive muggle family. Even the richest families feared the media. To place your family in public was to bear the gaze of the public. And attacking the adoptive family of the beloved boy-who-lived was one sure way to gain infamy – and a lot of enemies.
Now that the issue of Harry Potter's adoption was again relevant in the Wizarding World, muggles would quickly lose the grudging respect that had been afforded to them over the last few years.
Albus reached for the sweets on his desk, absentmindedly unwrapping one. 'This taste... toffee'. He checked the wrapper, and the edges of his mouth twitched slightly as he dropped it in the bin he kept, out of sight, behind his desk. 'It was butterscotch?'
He stood, pushing the chair from the desk as he did. Using Harry Potter, and overall-innocent boy (Albus wasn't going to judge him on how many times he'd stolen candy when his cousin wasn't looking), left a bitter taste in his mouth; one that his own candy couldn't wash out. But there were billions of muggles in the world, and only one Harry Potter. With that thought, he grabbed a generous handful of floo power and vanished with a flurry of flames. It was time to see how Harry was doing.
-St. Mungo's ~ First Floor-
Harry sat in his bed, trying to take in the information presented to him. It was an odd thought to think that he might, all these years, have been wanted by other people, might have been loved had the man in the plum-velvet suit not placed him with his relatives. He would have been quite sure that it was all a dream, if it hadn't seemed to be so realistic; the flashing lights, pounding on the door, people shouting out questions through the closed door and the general hubbub downstairs. And if it really was a dream, a very long realistic dream, he wished that he would never wake up.
Orange beams of light trailed in from the windows in the room, illuminating the face of the school doctor before him. In the light of the setting sun, Urey's face seemed older, wearier and the shadows traced the faint lines on his face. Urey turned from Harry, waving a hand in goodbye.
It had already been a full day since they'd delivered Harry to the hospital, taking care of paperwork and arguing with the nurses. By the time morning had come, they had been utterly exhausted, with the exception of Winry who had been sleeping in one of the guest chairs that had been magically expanded to resemble a sofa. However, the rising sun brought with it another dilemma as it revealed thousands of 'polite' reporters who had been considerate enough to wait till dawn in order to give them their 'sleep', but considered sunrise to be an acceptable time to begin interviewing people. He hadn't slept, he thought, for a rough 48 hours, and they'd been quite literally stranded in the hospital, forced to stay by the hordes of reporters, and their own worry for Harry, who was the ultimate goal for the hordes of information-starved wizards.
Urey exited the room with a practised soft tread, designed to relax patients, being doubly sure to bolt and lock the door behind him with both physical and magical methods. One could never be too sure in any case, and the boy-who-lived had his own enemies as well.
He strolled down the halls, his stride long and bearing the confidence gained only through years of expert work, noting the surprising emptiness of the corridor. St. Mungo's, it seemed, hated reporters as much as he himself did. The warding and illusion charms around Harry's room were superb, and it would take much more than a mere reporter to break them. 'Those reporters, it's more crowded than even the halls of Hogwarts before breakfast,' he thought ruefully,fondly remembering his schooling days.
The Rockbells had been given a room in hospital wing adjacent to Harry's; the rooms near Harry were empty to give a deceptive sense of emptiness for the more persistent reporters. The rooms were close enough to be able to walk from theirs to Harry's within five minutes, or one minute running, yet far enough to give them both a feeling of privacy and peaceful seclusion. What a pity that five minutes walk was five minutes too far away.
-St. Mungo's ~ Floo Network ~ Overflow Fire-
Albus was not surprised that he had been within the realms of the floo network for a while, just under two minutes if his mental clock was accurate, but he was quite annoyed none-the-less. A near two minutes of spinning (though he was rotating slower now), was enough to make most anyone feel sick.
The overflow part of the floo network had been invented during the dark days when Voldemort had still been in power, and most wizarding families preferred to travel by floo or apparation rather than walk. For Hogwarts, where there were anti-apparation wards, most families tried to send their children by floo. It had ended disastrously, the fireplaces unable to handle the sheer number of students, dumping dozens of students in fireplaces meant only for one, or sending them to obscure classrooms and dungeons around the school, not to mention some had been sent to Durmstrang and Beauxbatons. The overflow system only permitted one wizard to appear in a fireplace, slowing time so that the rest spun slowly until the wizard left the fireplace.
Unlike apparation, floo had many obvious flaws, such as two wizards whose paths intersected were likely to crash into each other, sending them both into different floo paths to reappear far from their destination with injuries and, more often than not, sever headaches.
Albus was relieved as he finally stopped spinning, appearing in a fireplace on the reception. He sucked in a shaky breath, fought the urge to throw up his dinner and clambered somewhat awkwardly out of the fireplace. The large congregation of reporters before him was enough to dissuade from asking at the front desk, instead he headed for the stairs. Injuries inflicted by muggles were on the first floor, unless his memory was now utterly failing him. It was past time time that he and young Harry had a little chat.
On a humorous side note; my spell check picked up 'Malfoy' and suggested 'Malformed/Malformation', 'Mollify' (Isn't that similar to 'Molly' now...) and 'Malefic', while 'Lucius' is apparently similar to 'Laciest'. Imagine that, 'Laciest Malformed'! (Poor Malfoy..)
Perhaps even funnier, is that one of our school's 'beloved' *cough*hated*cough* maths teachers had garlic thrown at her by a year seven girl, who told her that she though her to be a vampire. Oddly enough, she was more irked that the girl had 'breeched safety rules' than being accused of being an vampire...
Next update? Probably next Wednesday. I'll try and keep update once a week..